3d models development

[foad]

damn, i just noticed that "- alpha-channel shouldn't be used in the texture".
I do not remember that I've seen this before on the tracker. but I was sure that the alpha channel can be used. what about this?

[Horatio]

Technically possible, but better not, because issues might appear.

[Lexx]

What issues? Did anything happened with alpha-channel textures already? Transparency is a quite important tool for making different clothes without changing the base model (different long coats, robes, or other clothes which might be long or short or with holes, etc).

[Luther Blissett]

I think it's a case where the selection outline and shadows don't react to it. Internal holes and transparencies should be fine, as they wouldn't affect the overall shadow or outline, but I think cutting off part of the model in this way probably wouldn't work.

However, I'm pretty sure the subset thing used on the main body would be transferable, so we could assign multiple materials to an item i.e. main body/left sleeve/right sleeve, then use the "disable subset" to remove them, to make a one sleeved or no sleeved version of a jacket. I've not actually tested this yet, but I think there's a fair chance of it working. It's on my "to mess about with and test" list somewhere (I was looking at potential ways to make hair/hats work without either "hat baldness" or "hair poking through the helmet).

[Lexx]

But the shadow is quite small and you will never see it in length. Just check out the image on the previous page. I'm sure nobody would notice any real difference.

[Haraldx]

How about perfomance hits? IdTech 3 (Quake 3 engine) had problems when rendering alpha. Occasionally, maps with alot of foliage had worse frame rates than maps with alot of geometry.

[Johnnybravo]

How about perfomance hits? IdTech 3 (Quake 3 engine) had problems when rendering alpha. Occasionally, maps with alot of foliage had worse frame rates than maps with alot of geometry.

?!
On pre-Geforce graphics or what? When you are using alpha, and not running ray-tracing engine ( ) all you really have to care about is to minimize the invisible surface, because it still needs to be processed. But seriously there won't be screen filled with 3D anyway, because only actors are going to use it.

[Horatio]

?!
On pre-Geforce graphics or what? When you are using alpha, and not running ray-tracing engine ( ) all you really have to care about is to minimize the invisible surface, because it still needs to be processed. But seriously there won't be screen filled with 3D anyway, because only actors are going to use it.

Let me guess. This is why we won't probably have splatter effects based on alphatextured polygons?

[Johnnybravo]

No it's not a problem.
It's only problem when you fill the screen with tons of overlapping quads and have to fill them all. Even better hardware can have some problem, because fill rate is not really raising that rapidly. But then again, it does not really matter whether or not they are transparent. Because of this, often simple quads are not always used (more complex shapes can be more useful because of lower fill rate required) or they are optimized/rotated to reduce transparent areas to minimum.

HOWEVER, in Fonline you are not going to see huge splats covering whole your screen, with smoke and fire all over the place. Perhaps at massive zooming, but that's not the thing that requires huge attention.
If those splats do not exist yet, it's more likely because there are no inbuilt particle generators or that kind of stuff, and artists have to incorporate them within the model which takes far more time and work. Performance is not problem here.

[Haraldx]

On pre-Geforce graphics or what?

On current GeForce 7k to 9k series (Can't remember how it went with my old 6k series, so can't tell you anything about that). Maps with foliage were third party anyway if I remember correctly. There are enough mods for IdTech 3 now and most of them use some kind of alpha channel. Wherever it shows up for quite some time it's possible to get sometimes an even very noticeable framerate hit. But as you stated already, I guess you won't be able to see alot of alpha that overlaps.

[Johnnybravo]

ID3 was usually bottlenecked by CPU in maps with a bit more polygons, because all the transforming and rendering was rather primitive. It is however unrelated to usage of alpha blending.
Nevertheless this is getting a bit offtopic. I'd suggest using them as much as you like. As for shadows and that kind of stuff, it'd be neat if they were done by some more modern technique like shadowmapping, but will be hardly notable anyway.

[Haraldx]

The misc item tracker seems to have gone nuts. Pictures are in wrong places and other nonesense. I guess something went wrong there. Armor and weapon tracker seems to be alright tho.

[Graf]

It seems alright from my side. Try to use a different browser or something. Or tell me where are the pictures in wrong places.

[Haraldx]

Hmm... Weird... As I look through at the very moment, everything is in it's place. Yesterday it was pretty random indeed, for example, the decomposed body icon was replaced with the wire-frame picture of something and... I totally made no sense. Migth have indeed been a browser bug.

[Haraldx]

A terrible texture for a confusing UV map.


The more I look at the inventory picture, the more it makes me feel I actually should have edited the model. Yet again, waste of polygons.